I was surprised at just how many parts of design I was not considering! The reading makes so many things a lot clearer. Logically, I know that machines can be difficult to use, and that there is a learning curve when it comes to them. But for so long, I had just dismissed difficult to work with machines as something humans just had to deal with. Professionals are more likely to understand how to use certain machines, and older people may not understand how to use newer technologies. That’s understandable, and feel like simple facts of life, some people are just not capable of understanding machines. But of course, that shouldn’t be true! Machines should be designed with user experience in mind, engineers should not be dismissing people’s confusion.
I am curious about what the line is though. At what point should humans understand machines and devices. If we follow this logic, should I not know how to fix my devices if they break? Does it not make sense for me to have the tools available in order to not be reliant on anybody else when it comes to my own devices? Should I leave repairs such as this to the professionals? There’s just a ton to consider when it comes to how much we do and should understand about devices.
The reading had me thinking about certain designs I may struggle to use or find myself continuously frustrated with, and something that came to mind was sinks. I always felt that sinks are, for some reason, the one thing hotel bathrooms cannot get right (hotel bathrooms as a whole are designed badly, but I am specifically referring to sinks now). Which is crazy to me, considering there are so many sinks out there that work perfectly fine. What some hotels do however is they decide to make their sink have a fancier design. This usually means changing the sink’s faucet to look more fancy and ‘clean’, or by changing the bowl that collects the water (see the picture below). This ends up creating a few problems, the one I am used to encountering is when a sink’s faucet is too far back for the bowl. So the water is only falling in the very back of the bowl, and you have to stretch your arms over the unreasonably big bowl that serves no purpose other than to block your way. Additionally, some sinks have the bowl be on the table rather than embedded into it. This not only makes the sink uncomfortable to use, but it also puts the soap at an awkward place. Now you can’t place the soap near where the faucet is, it has to be put at the side, which means anytime you need to use it, you will naturally be getting water onto other part of the table.
I don’t think the design for sinks needs to be that crazy. If hotels really did want sinks to look fancy, then they should just change the countertop and maybe the color of the faucet, but leave the actual sink alone. Any designs to improve on the look only harms the design.
When it comes to interactive media, the main thing to think about is obviously, the interactions with technology, so it makes sense to focus on the connection between humans and how to make technology more accessible to them. If you want to create something that people can interact with, they need to know exactly how to interact with it. First of all, human-centered design (HCD) should be a priority, if the entire point is for people to interact with it, then we need to keep the people in question in mind. Additionally, if people are not able to figure out the design, then that ruins the experience of using the design. No matter how cool it is, if people deems it too annoying to try out, they will be less likely to care for it. A good way to do this is by introducing signifiers to designs, just to make the overall experience of using them much simpler. All other principles he mentions are also important in the general sense, things like affordances, mapping, signifiers, feedback, etc. all should just be a normal part of the design process, especially when it comes to interactive media.